


“If the sky comes falling down…”

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: 1.01 AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Heavy Angst, Jack undercover, instead of Nikki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15873987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: “...for you, there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do.” Avicii-“Hey Brother”Jack wouldn’t have taken the CIA’s undercover assignment if they’d dragged him to a black cell themselves. And then they showed him the file the DXS mole had leaked to the Organization. Jack will do anything to protect Mac’s life. Even break his heart.





	“If the sky comes falling down…”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nevcolleil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/gifts).



> This story got under my skin after Nevcolliel brought it up in a Tumblr conversation. I just couldn't stop thinking about it until I wrote it.

Jack parks the clunker of a car he’s rented, that smells like it was last used to transport chicken crates, nearly a half a block from his target, then follows the man he’s been tailing into the warehouse.

Eduardo Rodriguez is a good man. A small-town police chief who’s discovered the gun-running organization turning Soleo, Guatemala into a hotbed of crime. Unfortunately, the Organization has a finger in the pie of that particular smuggling ring. And they’ve sent Jack to take out the man who’s now threatening it.

He waits until the police chief is far enough inside the building that whatever happens can’t be seen, and then Jack lunges for the man. He gets in one good hit to the back of the head, but not enough to knock this guy out cold. Jack pins him to the floor. Rodriguez flails, yelling equal parts frightened and angry Spanish curses. Jack fires two rounds into the wall. He slaps a hand on the man’s mouth and snaps sharply into the comms, “target neutralized,” before switching the earpiece off.

Rodriguez’s shocked silence doesn’t last long. One fist gives Jack what will likely be a pretty decent shiner in a couple hours, before he manages to shout over the man’s litany of curses, “¡Tratando de salvar tu vida!”

The man stops shouting, although not scrambling, and Jack switches to English, since the file Jack was given for the hit said he was fairly fluent.

“Shh. You and your family are about to take a nice, quiet boat ride. I’m not going to kill you, stop fighting with me!” Even with a concussion, this guy’s a scrapper. Makes sense, if he’s the sort to actually do something about the corruption in his town. Unfortunately, the town will soon be without his morals and leadership.

Rodriguez will disappear. Jack will claim he took the dead man and his family out on that boat and fed him to the sharks. The hacker the CIA has making sure the boat stays out of satellite feeds, some reformed criminal Jack has only ever heard referred to as “Artemis”, is good. Scary good, like the kid his ex-girlfriend had, the one who never liked him. Riley.

Just another person he’s cared so much about that Jack’s job has forced him to abandon. He’s sacrificed so much, and he’s been asking himself a lot, lately, if it’s worth it. He quickly gives Rodriguez the rundown of the plan, drags the man’s apparently limp body to his car, and shoves him in the trunk for the ride to his family’s house, where Jack quietly explains to the man’s wife and daughters what’s happening before shoving them in the car at gunpoint. Next stop is the marina. Jack takes them out onto the water to meet the CIA’s pickup team, who will be taking Rodriguez to safely testify on his findings in court. He takes the boat back to the marina and returns to the warehouse, ostensibly taking time to clean up his mess and make it look like nothing’s happened. When he leaves the warehouse with a couple black trash bags, filled with random junk he found on the floor, the cameras are watching. The Organization has been duped one more time.

Three hours later, while he’s enjoying a beer at a downtown bar, his phone buzzes. There’s never much downtime between operations. He’s quickly become the Organization’s most in-demand ‘cleaner’, the guy who can make any problem they have go away, usually the messy way. Or so it seems.

Jack’s not entirely sure what he is now. Formerly DXS, apparently Organization, actually CIA. Does that make him a triple agent, maybe? His former CIA bosses called him in when they found an intel leak that was tracing back to his new agency, the DXS. They’d less than politely demanded his help finding the leak, and shutting down the people it was going to, a shadowy group known only as the Organization.

Jack had tried to refuse, saying he was sure they could find someone else, and then he’d been sent some of the intel the CIA had intercepted. One file was enough to convince him he had to stop this mole. His partner’s full, unredacted dossier is in the hands of a shadow agency hell-bent on destruction. And Jack would do anything to protect MacGyver.

But ‘anything’ leaves a bad taste in his mouth now. It wasn’t supposed to mean breaking the kid’s heart by making it look like Jack’s been killed. It wasn’t supposed to mean a bullet in Mac’s chest that left him fighting for his life for three weeks, without Jack there to support him. It wasn’t supposed to mean that he’s never been able to so much as send a note or a text telling Mac he’s still alive, that he’s coming home someday.

His next job, the text tells him, is in Singapore, and the flight he’s been booked on has a layover at LAX. He’ll have three hours in the city. More than enough time for what he needs to do.

It’s against every protocol, because if he’s caught his cover’s blown, but the CIA handler he has is actually a decent person and looks the other way. He doesn’t ask how, but she managed to get her hands on the Phoenix reports of what happened after that last op at Lake Como. Jack knows, from that file, that his own actions after he faked his death went unnoticed.

Mac doesn't know Jack dragged him to safety and kept him alive until medical was on the way. He might remember Jack leaning over him, pleading with the kid to stay with him, to stay alive, but Mac probably thinks he was delirious, imagining Jack’s ghost. Mac’s file says he remembers nothing from the shot that sent Jack plummeting to his fake death until he woke up in a Swiss hospital, for the first time without Jack by his side.

He calls his handler, Agent Samantha Cage, on the secured burner phone he uses that the Organization can’t trace, thanks to Artemis. Cage is tough and no-nonsense, and she’s one of the few agents Jack respects enough to be honest with.

When he made his first visit to Mac’s, he didn’t tell anyone. He snuck away from the airport, turned off anything that could track him, and took a cab, under a fake name and paying the driver cash. Mac wasn’t even home that day, still in intensive care, but Jack was actually grateful, because just seeing the house was torture. Seeing Mac there, but unable to go to him, would have been overwhelming.

The minute he showed up to one of the safe houses in Malaysia for debrief after  the mission he’d been on, Cage shoved him into an interrogation room and got the truth from him in three hours. It’s a personal record worst for Jack’s ability to last in interrogation, but the girl is smart. Almost a mind reader. And, Jack reminds himself, that was back when everything was still raw. He couldn’t hide his emotions about the kid very well then, and Cage took advantage.

When she heard the whole story, she agreed not to tell anyone else. And then she got Mac’s file. And helped make sure any time Jack had a layover in LAX, Artemis discreetly modified his tickets so he had a few hours to kill.

He’s gotten familiar with the heavy Aussie accent that comes in on the secure line. “Nice work, Dalton. Our people are securing Rodriguez and his family as we speak.”

“I’ll contact you when I land in Singapore.” He ends the call and heads for the airport and the plane that will take him home, if only for a few hours.

* * *

There’s a rental car waiting at the airport, courtesy of Artemis and Jack’s alias “Nico Roman”. He uses a new cover every time he comes to LA, just in case someone’s tracking these unauthorized trips.

He knows the road by heart, he thinks he could probably drive it blindfolded. Traffic is worse than normal, because it’s evening, but Jack has all the shortcuts and detours memorized too. He parks three streets away from the house and walks in. Thankfully, the area Mac lives is in a bit woodsy, and Jack’s got ample cover to sneak up unnoticed.

There’s a fire burning on the deck. Mac’s sitting out there, alone. Jack wonders where Nikki is. She used to be there a lot, Jack had seen her helping Mac with his sling when his shoulder was still healing, sitting sharing beers with him in the evenings, or pecking away at her laptop, talking with Mac about something Jack was too far away to hear.

Lately, she’d been doing more with the computers, and looking less and less like it was something she enjoyed. Nikki and her computers were like Jack and his guns, or Mac and his Swiss Army knife. Practically an extension of her, something she’d never get tired of using. Except that now it seems like she has. Lately, every time she’s had been working on hers at Mac’s house, she looks like she’d rather be doing anything else.

If someone gave Jack three guesses why, he’s sure he could get it in one. Mac is obsessed with finding Jack’s “killers” and ending them. And he’s pulling Nikki into it as well. From what Jack could see, at the beginning she was as dedicated as Mac, scouring the globe for Kendrick. But as weeks turned into months with no leads, she must have decided other jobs took priority. Jack knows she’s back to field agent with DXS now, he almost ran into her in Nepal two weeks ago.

As Jack watches, Mac adds a fourth beer bottle to the collection beside him. He’s holding something in his hand, and Jack can see now that it’s a stack of pictures of the two of them. Jack’s selfies; he knows what every one of them will be. In the Sandbox, full tactical gear and grinning like idiots, last day of their tours. In Budapest, Heroes’ Square, where Jack has a black eye and Mac has a cut on his cheek. In Caracas, leaning on the car Mac crashed catching their bad guy. In Cairo, both of them plenty the worse for wear and their smiles showing the concussions. In Mumbai, where Jack has paint smears all over his tac gear from the festival he chased an assassin through. And Como. The last selfie Jack took before he ‘died’.

Mac looks like he half wants to throw the pictures in the fire, and Jack can only guess what’s going through the kid’s head. Probably something Nikki’s snapped at him on one of those long, hopelessly searching nights.

_Let him go. He’s dead and gone and nothing you do can bring him back. You have to move on. This downward spiral you’re in; it’s unhealthy. You have to find a way to let go._

But he doesn’t throw the pictures into the leaping flames. He sets them down on the bench beside him and stares out into the night. The fire picks out glittering lines snaking their way down his cheeks.

Jack wants to step out from the shadows, to wrap the kid in a bear hug and never let him go again, but if Mac knows the truth he’s in even more danger than he already is now. Jack can’t risk Mac’s life just for a whim. _What he needs is more important than what I want._ And he tries very hard to trample down the little voice inside his head that screams that what Mac needs is Jack.

So he sits there in the grass and watches while Mac cries, and then throws a bottle against the porch railing, and then yells apologies inside to Bozer, and then goes to the kitchen for a broom and dustpan. He watches Mac sweep up the shattered amber glass and throw it away, then lean on the railing and stare up at the stars.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” he whispers. “I don’t know if they’re letting you watch me from up there, but if you can see me, I’m sorry I turned into such a mess. I know if you were here you’d have beaten some sense into me with a right hook by now. But I just don’t know what to do without you.” He sags against the railing, like a puppet with slashed strings. “I need you, Jack. And I’m so sorry I failed when you needed me. It’s my fault you’re dead and I’m sorry.”

Jack needs to leave. Now. Before he does something he and the entire CIA will regret. His retreat is none too subtle, but hopefully Mac will assume it’s a wild animal roaming the darkening night.

Jack really shouldn’t be making the drive to the airport with his emotions running this high, but there’s no choice. And it’s not like he’s suicidal, going to drive into the oncoming lane at the first sight of a semi truck. It’s the exact opposite. He’s more careful than he’s ever been, because if this is what happens when he’s fake dead, he can’t afford to be real dead. At least now, he has the promise of going home when the mission is over.

But this mission is dragging on longer and longer. What was meant to be a month has stretched to three, with no sign of ending any time soon. The mole, known only as ‘Chrysalis’, is covering their tracks well. They’re no closer to proof. Jack has suspicions, but that’s all they are. Nothing is solid enough to arrest anyone over.

When he gets home, what’s going to be left of the Mac he knew? Because the Mac Jack has fought beside, bled beside, isn’t the person he saw on that porch tonight. Jack doesn’t recognize that drunk, defeated, broken boy. And the longer he stays away, the worse it will be.

Jack leans his head back against the plane seat, but even the in-flight rerun of “Die Hard With a Vengeance” can’t stop him from seeing the kid sitting there, staring into the fire, lost and adrift.

* * *

When the Organization contacts him after Singapore, Jack thinks they’re onto him. They bring up the Como job and the canister, and Jack thinks they must know he faked the whole thing. But it’s an actual mission. They’re going to use the virus now, and they want Jack’s ‘expertise’.

The whole thing smacks of some setup, because Jack’s ‘expertise’ is guns and tactical planning. Not ‘supervirus’. When he calls Cage, he stays on the phone a little longer than normal. He tells her thank you. He tells her nothing that happens out there is her fault. Because he’s pretty sure, when he does what he has to do, because there’s no way he’s letting the Organization release that virus, that he won’t be coming back.

He can’t stand the sight of Kendrick waiting for him at the hotel. The bastard shot his partner in the chest, almost killed Mac right there. Jack can barely stomach the thought of being in the same city as him, let alone the same building. His hands are itching for his gun. But he has a job to do.

Kendrick hasn’t let that canister out of his sight since Como, Jack would bet. And this is their last chance to retrieve it before it’s unleashed on the world. He has no idea how he’s going to get it away from Kendrick. And he’s still trying to figure out why he’s on this op, and if it’s going to end with a bullet in his back. Until the hotel fire alarm goes off, people start evacuating, and Jack recognizes this kind of plan in a heartbeat.

DXS must have gotten wind of the whole thing, and because not all of them are the mole, they’re going to be sending their people in to fix their mistake from last time. And they’re not sending just anyone. No wonder Jack is here. The mole knows exactly which agents are going to be assigned, and they’ve hand-picked Jack, either for the fact that he knows MacGyver better than anyone else and might stand a chance of beating him, or to test his loyalty. Maybe both.

They’re good, he knows it. Nikki must have hacked the computer they got hold of. The DXS has their location, and that smoke alarm trick has Mac written all over it.

Jack was hoping the kid wouldn’t be on this op, but it was too much to ask. Mac should be kept well away from anything to do with the Como job, since he’s too emotionally compromised to be in the field working it. But knowing him, he begged Thornton to let him have a shot at finding the people he thinks killed Jack. And knowing Patty, she couldn’t refuse.  

When they hit the lobby, Jack’s already scanning the crowd. He’s used to being the target; he’s usually volunteering himself as the bait in ops. But he’s not used to being the target of his own former team.

Then he sees a very familiar pair of blondes, one with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and a computer rig in her hands, the other wearing a very familiar brown leather jacket, and staring straight at Jack. He’s far enough away that Jack shouldn’t be able to make out the expression on his face, but he can anyway because he knows Mac too well. That’s complete disbelief. The look of a man who’s seen a ghost.

Jack runs. Because Kendrick is here, and he’ll expect Jack to finish the job he obviously didn’t. And Jack is willing to do a lot to maintain his cover, to find the mole, but the only reason he’s doing this is to keep Mac safe. No amount of patriotism in the world can convince him to pull the trigger on his best friend. So he runs.

He knows Mac will follow, but he has a bit of a head start and he has to take advantage of it. He convinces Kendrick to give him the canister to get to the new drop site. He tells him he knows better than anyone how to avoid Mac finding him. He hardly believes it when Kendrick agrees to the plan. It’s almost too easy.

Jack hotwires two different cars, avoiding both the Organization’s tracking and hopefully anything Mac could possibly use to track him. He takes a detour on the way to the drop point, stopping at the location Cage set up for him, just a vending machine outside a gas station that, when a particular code is pressed, drops a canister the exact replica of the virus container.

It should be good enough to fool their contact, and it is. Jack makes the handoff without question, the real virus hidden safely in the lining of his jacket, because there’s no way he’s letting it out of his sight again. He takes note of the truck, and vaguely thinks that if Mac were here the kid would come up with some ingenious way of disabling it, or the bomb, or both. But Jack isn’t Mac, and the most important thing right now is to get the virus out of there. If he tries to stop the bomb, he’ll blow his cover, probably get killed for real, and lose the virus, and this will have been for nothing.

And then he heads for the airport. He needs to get out of here, because if he stays any longer he’s going to stay forever. He looks back at the skyline and wonders if he’ll ever be able to come back. Because now Mac doesn’t just think he’s dead. He thinks Jack’s a traitor. _What do I do when this is over? I can’t go back to DXS now._ Because even if Mac might believe that there’s some other explanation for Jack’s sudden return from the dead, Nikki won’t. She’ll go straight to Thornton with everything she knows, and Jack will be blacklisted forever. Thornton will probably want to put him six feet under for doing this to her, and to Mac. Even when the truth comes out, he’s still going to be a traitor. Still a liar. Still the person who broke Mac’s heart and abandoned him.

And then a van bursts onto the runway, and someone jumps out, racing for the jet. Jack knows that loping, rapid run, God knows he’s tried way too many times to keep up with it. And despite the fact that he’s supposed to get away clean, that he should be worried about his cover, Jack smiles. The kid never, ever gives up.

They take off, and Jack wonders where the kid is because Mac is scared to death of heights and they’re climbing fast. Then the pilot yells something about problems with the landing gear and they start coming back down. Jack shakes his head.

* * *

When he comes face to face with the kid again, he can’t bear the hurt and betrayal in Mac’s eyes. “Jack, _why?_ ” Mac sounds like he might be on the verge of tears, but he’s not moving, not even shaking, even though Jack has his gun leveled squarely at Mac’s forehead.

The kid looks like shit. He’s got grey shadows under his eyes that reach all the way to cheekbones that stand out much, much too sharply. Jack watched him from the window running the plane down, but that wasn’t the speed of a healthy young agent who thought running marathons was a fun way to spend a weekend. That was a feverish desperation that was carrying someone who by rights should have fallen down exhausted on the runway.

Jack knows Mac doesn’t eat when he’s worried, and it shows. Pops’s leather jacket looks about three sizes too big instead of one, where it’s hanging around the kid’s shoulders. And in the hollow of his neck, where Jack can see fragile collarbones peeking out from the unbuttoned neck of his shirt, are Jack’s dog tags, tarnished and worn.

Mac has been falling apart, just because he believed Jack was dead. What happens if Jack lets him think he’s a traitor? Lets Mac believe Jack chose money or some insane cause over him?  Everyone else in the kid’s life has walked away, and he’s always told Jack that he’s grateful to have him as the constant he can count on. If Jack takes that away, he’s afraid it’ll be the final push. The kid’s going to crumble till he’s nothing but ash.

He puts the gun down and shouts the code phrase DXS uses for their deep cover ops agents.

It’s a long shot, Jack knows. This is an old code, from the last time he and Mac were deep under, in Cairo. It’s not any sort of guarantee at all that he’s not a traitor, not like the code the CIA’s given him. But Mac and Nikki don’t know his CIA passphrase, and he knows Mac will understand him using the code from Cairo.

The looks of dawning realization and anger on Mac and Nikki’s faces would be funny if they weren’t directed at Jack.

“Jack?” Mac’s eyes widen. “You’re undercover?”

“Don’t listen to him, Mac,” Nikki snaps, keeping her gun trained on him. “That’s an outdated code. He’s playing us. Thinks we’ll just trust him.” Jack hears the cut in her words, aimed at Mac, and he wants to punch her. If that wouldn’t totally destroy any trust they might have that he’s on their side, he’d do it.

Jack raises his hands. “Mac, I swear, I am undercover. Just with the CIA, not DXS. If I wasn’t, don’t you think I’d have killed you both by now? You can call my handler if you want to confirm. Call the field office and ask for Samantha Cage. She’ll tell you everything.”

Nikki does, and Jack hears the clipped Aussie voice sigh when she picks up and hears Nikki half yelling at her. “Yes, Dalton’s ours. Which I’m regretting right now since I’m going to have to explain to the deputy director why he’s just blown his cover.” She hangs up, and Jack knows he’s in for a world of hurt when this is over. But it’s nothing compared to the look on Mac’s face as he takes everything in.

“Why the hell would you do this to us, Jack?” Nikki is almost screaming. Mac looks too shell-shocked to say a thing.

“I had no choice.” Jack realizes how stupid that sounds. How cliche. But it’s the truth.

“No choice? You couldn’t have told us you were going undercover? Couldn’t have warned us?”

“If I did, the op would have been blown. There’s a mole in DXS, selling classified secrets. And I didn’t know who I could trust.” He realizes that was a major mistake when he sees the hurt on Mac’s face grow ten times.

_Ah shit. Now he thinks I didn’t even trust him._

“If anyone even thought you might know the truth, you could have been in danger. I couldn’t risk making you targets for the mole.” He sighs and sits down. “The less people who knew, the better it would be. You weren’t supposed to find out I was alive until the mission was over.”

“You gave them a lethal virus.” Nikki snaps.

“It was my buy-in. To convince them I was legitimately on their side.”

“And letting them use it, is that a buy-in too? How could you let them take that virus? Jack, it’s not worth it! You can’t let millions of people die because you need to maintain a cover.” Mac’s voice is shattering, and Jack hears the words he knows the kid will never say, because in the face of all this, Mac would think they sound selfish. _How could you let them shoot me? How could you let me believe you died?_

Jack holds out a small bag, labeled clearly with the biohazard symbol. Nikki snatches it from him and glances inside.

She holds up the canister and hands it to Mac. “This...this is the virus.”

Jack nods. “The canister they have is a fake. But the bomb is very real.”

“And they’re taking it into the heart of the city, aren’t they?” Mac asks.

“We need to stop it. Even though the virus is a dud, people are going to die.” Nikki’s pulling satellite imagery on her laptop.

“The truck is military issue, canvas-back. Should be heading north. I did the drop at an abandoned drugstore right about here.” Jack points to the map. “He’ll be on the highway, I’m sure.”

“Got him.” Nikki’s watching a live feed of the truck. “There’s a chopper here we can probably grab, try and run him down.”

“I’ll get us there.” Jack slips his gun into his belt.

“Jack…” Mac’s voice trails off, a wordless plea. _Please don’t be lying to us. Please don’t just try to kill us again._

“You think I’m letting you go alone? No way, Mac. You go kaboom, I go kaboom, got it?” But the words ring hollow. After Jack left the kid on the Lake Como beach with a bullet in him, how can he promise to be there for him now?

* * *

Jack hovers the helicopter, watching helplessly as the guys throw Mac around like he’s a rag doll. Even under the best circumstances, he hates seeing the kid get into a fight. Now, he knows Mac’s running on fumes. Adrenaline is the only thing keeping him on his feet, and that’s going to fade fast.

Beside him, Nikki’s typing as fast as she can, alerting every police scanner in the area to the threat, calling for a roadblock. Jack wants to let her take the stick, get down in there and help Mac, but Nikki’s never been any good when it comes to flying. Or even precision driving, for that matter.

“Why don’t you get down there and help him?” Jack shouts over the roar of the blades.

“He’s got it covered,” Nikki yells back. _He’s got it covered? Can’t you see he’s getting his ass kicked down there?_ “My job is to stop them from getting to the city, and we need a roadblock, a full bomb squad, and agency presence. I’m giving him all the help I can from up here.”

Jack sighs, but then he watches Mac kick one of the men out the back of the truck, and knock the other out with something he picked up off the floor. He kneels down next to the bomb and starts pulling on the wires.

Suddenly, Nikki’s computer starts beeping, and she begins typing frantically, shoving on her headphones. “Mac! Someone must have made a distress call!” Nikki shouts. “They’re asking for the bomb to be triggered remotely, right now! Get out now!”

Jack watches as the kid jumps to his feet, grabs some of the tie-downs and slashes a section of canvas out of the truck. His makeshift parachute carries him just far enough from the truck that when the bomb does go off, flinging flame and shrapnel in all directions, he’s shielded from the worst of it.

Jack sets the chopper down fast, running to where Mac is lying curled up in the middle of the highway, groaning softly.

“Hey, Mac, you okay?” He’s vividly reminded of the last time he was leaning over the kid, of the bright red soaking his shirt and gushing out under Jack’s hands. _Please don’t be hurt, please don’t be hurt._

There’s no blood, other than a few scratches on Mac’s hands and cheeks, and he sits up gingerly, wrapping an arm protectively around his side. Probably more than a few cracked ribs. “Ahhh, that sucked.” He takes Jack’s hand to help him up. “That was not as fun as it looked.”

Jack can hear the sirens coming, and he sighs. His cover’s already close to destroyed, but there might be a chance of salvaging it if he can get it to look like Mac and Nikki captured him and forced him to help them. “You have to let them take me in,” he tells Mac quietly, stepping back from the kid a bit. He holds out a couple of zip ties from his back pocket. He still hasn’t shaken the habit of carrying around random junk in case Mac needs it for one of his inventions. There’s a gum wrapper, some pennies, one lens from a pair of sunglasses, and three paperclips in his other pockets.

“Jack…”

“My cover’s compromised. I have to make it look good.”

“Or you could stay.” He can hear the desperation in Mac’s tone.

“Believe me, buddy, I want to. But I can’t. There’s a mole in DXS, and I gotta find out who. I have to, or someone might get hurt.” _You might get hurt._

“I can’t lose you again.” Mac whispers, and Jack doesn’t see a trained, field-cleared agent who disarmed multiple IEDs in Afghanistan. He sees a boy whose mother died, whose father left without any explanation, never to return. Someone who’s lost every anchor he had.

The police cars pull to a stop, and there’s no time to change their minds.

“We can still finish your mission,” Mac says quietly. “We’ll find the mole from inside. Our way.” Nikki nods, and Jack starts walking toward the cars. _Let’s see how good they are at sorting out why they’re face to face with a dead man._

* * *

“You should be on your way to the Hole in cuffs right now, Dalton.” Patty is almost snarling. “I want to know what you’re doing in my office.”

“He’s not working for the Organization. He’s been undercover,” Mac says, too quickly, too nervously.

Jack takes over. “Patty, I know it’s a lot to process, but I swear it’s the truth. I went dark after Como, deep cover CIA. You have to trust me. DXS has a mole, and they’re selling intel to a dark agency. I’ve been trying to find out who it is but they’re good. Covering their tracks really well. Someone known only as Chrysalis.”

Nikki’s face changes. “Chrysalis? Jack, are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Thornton’s voice is ice. “Dalton is a traitor. He left you to die in Italy, and he was helping a terrorist group create a bomb using the virus he stole from us. He’s the mole, and he’s using your trust to get back inside here. This is a fabricated lie to make us believe him.” Jack wants to tell her to call Cage, like he told Nikki. _But Nikki was on comms when she made that call. Patty should have heard it. Why wouldn’t she believe Cage?_ There’s a thought skittering around his head that refuses to go away. _Why is she trying so hard to shut me down, to make them believe I’m lying?_ They haven’t been able to track the mole because it’s someone who’s familiar with agency protocols, who can find ways around the normal security safeguards...

“I don’t think so.” Nikki’s typing madly. “For weeks I’ve been tracking a transfer of secure coded messages from DXS servers. I’ve been trying to decrypt them, because they’re being sent to a different IP address almost every day, but so far the only thing my program has found is a tag identifying them as belonging to a code name ‘Chrysalis’.”

“I swear, it’s the truth. And whoever this is, is dangerous. Patty,” Jack’s voice lowers, _please don’t let this play out the way I think it will, this time I really want to be wrong_ , “they leaked Mac’s file. His full file. Those creeps know everything about him, and God knows what they’re planning on doing.” Nikki gasps and stops typing, staring first at Jack, then at Mac. Patty’s face barely twitches. _That’s anger, not concern._ It’s the look of someone whose carefully structured house of cards is beginning to collapse.

“If that’s the case, why didn’t you just come to me? Why didn’t you tell me we had a mole?” Patty paces angrily. “It would have been so much simpler than all this.” She waves a hand at the three of them. “You wouldn’t have compromised an important mission, you wouldn’t have cost us both you and MacGyver’s field skills, and I wouldn’t have an ulcer from wondering where that virus canister was going to pop up.” It’s such a normal Patty gripe, the same as after any mission where Mac, Jack, or both of them do something stupid. _Has she really been lying to us all this time?_

“With all due respect, Patty, if the CIA wasn’t telling you, I figured they had their reasons. Internal mole hunts are a messy business, you know that.” Jack sighs. “If the mole knew we were onto them, after them, they might have pulled up stakes and run.”

“Or we might have found them sooner. Without all this.” Patty frowns. “Dalton, you told me you’d never go back to the CIA. I didn’t ever think you’d choose them over the DXS to solve a problem like this.”

“I would when I couldn’t trust the DXS.” _And here we go. If I’m wrong, I’m definitely gonna lose my job over this one._ Jack folds his arms. “When I made the first call to Kendrick, I got assigned an internal contact in the DXS, presumably the mole themselves, to help me set up the whole thing. Someone who knew how to get around the DXS wiretaps on every agent’s phone. Someone who knew every specification of the mission we were going to be on. Someone who knew _me._ Unfortunately, they didn’t know me as well as they thought, because they should have known no amount of money in the world could make me betray my friends.” Jack looks Patty in the eye. “Unlike you.”

“What? This is outrageous.”

“Whoever the mole is has high clearance. Only you and the team knew about that Como mission, what we were really after. For a while, I didn’t know which of you it was. Could have been Nikki, could have been you. But we couldn’t rule out a third party who was able to hack into classified files. I wanted to believe that, because I didn’t want to think either of you would do that to us.”

“You have no proof.”

“You didn’t look the least bit surprised when I told you they had Mac’s file. You knew all along it had been leaked.” Jack doesn’t like how the puzzle pieces are falling into place. He’d been suspicious from the start, but he’d wanted to think Patty and Nikki would never sell out _Mac._ Maybe they’d give away secrets, but they would never hand over Mac’s file. Apparently, Patty would.

“Who do _you_ believe, Mac?” Jack pleads. _I have no right to ask you to believe me. I abandoned you._

Mac looks desperately between Patty and Jack. _The two people in his life he trusted completely, and now he’s being asked to decide which one of them lied to him and sold him out_ . “Patty, please. It’s not true, right? There’s someone else, isn’t there?” _She can’t deny there’s a mole, Nikki already closed that loophole._

“Ask Dalton, he’s probably been working with them since he left you to die at Como.”

Jack flinches, but it’s given him an idea. “Mac, I didn’t abandon you. I waited until the medical team was en route. Nikki, get his file. Look at the report from when he was airlifted.”

“GSW to upper left chest, fractured collarbone, collapsed lung, hypothermic with a body temperature of 97.4, and multiple broken ribs and bruising to the chest....” She trails off. “They said it was a result of impact with the guardrail and the water, but that’s the same kind of marks left by CPR…”

“I pulled you out of the water. You died on me, right there, Mac, and I kept you alive until they came to get you.” Jack reaches for Mac’s shoulders, and the kid shies away. “I stayed. And I asked you to stay with me.”

Mac blinks. “I remember. I could hear you yelling at me, but when I looked up all I could see was light and I thought maybe we were both dead.”

“No. No. Mac, I couldn’t let you die. I could let you think I was gone, and trust me, it’s the worst mistake I ever made, but I couldn’t let them kill you.”

Mac blinks, and Jack can see tears shining in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t put you in more danger.”

“How did you know about my medical file?” Mac asks, only now realizing that out of the DXS Jack shouldn’t have been able to access it.

“Not important.”

Patty shouts to be heard over them. “I’m calling Oversight. All three of you are now under arrest.”

“I’ve already done it. But they’re not coming for us.” Nikki snaps her laptop shut. “I backdoored your files, and your unredacted dossier says you operated under the code name Chrysalis ten years ago in Yemen. Which coincidentally is where Kendrick was that same year.”

The glass defrosts and Jack can see, outside, men in dark tac gear surrounding the room. But he snaps the cuffs on himself.

“Patricia Thornton, you’re under arrest for espionage.”

* * *

The DXS is in ruins. Their leadership gone, their work exposed to the world. They have to start over.

So does Jack. Mac’s as skittish around him as a greenbroke colt. He's barely seen the kid since the whole thing with Thornton went down. And he can't blame Mac for wanting some distance.

Jack calls the one person he knows can fix this. They’ve had their issues, in a big way. But Matilda Webber is the only person who can rebuild this agency the way Jack knows it should be. She doesn’t promise she can fix this dumpster fire of a mess they’re in, but she does promise to try. She says Oversight might be willing to work with her; and there’s something cryptic about the way she says it that makes Jack think the woman knows more than she’s telling. After today, he’s not sure how many secrets he can handle a superior holding onto. But then Matty thanks him, _thanks him,_ for exposing Thornton, and for looking after Mac, and he’s not sure what her game is but he knows one thing. Matty Webber would never in a million years do anything to hurt Mac. Never sell him out like Thornton did. Any other issues can be put aside for later.

Matty, surprisingly, agrees to Jack’s request that they transfer the rest of his team from the CIA. When Cage gets off the plane, he recognizes her. He almost doesn’t know how he knows the slender girl behind her with her hair in a messy ponytail, wearing a laptop rig. Then she looks up, and Jack’s so shocked he thinks he might fall over. “Artemis” is Riley Davis.

Nikki won’t be coming back. After watching the DXS crash and burn, she’s out of the game. Unwilling to risk getting into the same thing again. Mac’s hurting; Jack can see it, but at the same time, Jack’s pretty convinced it was the best thing that could have happened. Their relationship was already on the rocks over Mac’s obsessive search for Jack’s killers.

Nikki has told Jack, privately, that she feels like Mac chose him over her. There’s no real resentment, just a realization that Mac and Jack are far closer than Nikki ever got or could ever hope to get. For her, there will never be that war-forged bond, that instinctive knowledge that the other one’s about to do something stupid, that unconditional protection and the kind of friendship that comes when you’ve watched your life flash before your eyes only to see the other person save you at the last possible second.

So Nikki vanishes to live a new life with a new name in a new city, courtesy of Matty’s string-pulling, and Riley takes her place on the team.  Jack isn’t sure how this is going to work, because the last time he saw Riley she told him in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of her life. But it seems like having his back on multiple missions where she’s watched him almost die has mellowed her out, just a little, but enough. When he tells her he’s sorry about lying to her and leaving her and her mom without any word, she doesn’t slap him, she hugs him first. And then she slaps him.

* * *

When Mac calls and asks Jack to come over, Jack’s out the door before he hangs up. He pulls the dust cover off his GTO and is more than a little amazed by the glossy shine the car has underneath. Jack doesn’t remember having put the car in the garage before Como, much less having covered it up. And when he pulls out of the garage, he notices that the little buzzing rattle that had been there for a couple weeks is totally gone. _Aw, Mac._

Jack’s surprised to walk into the house and see so many people. Riley is perched on a counter with her laptop, apparently trying to find a Spotify playlist everyone can agree they like. Matty is having an animated chat with Bozer, and it sounds like he’s trying to cast her as the alien empress in his next film project. Cage is carrying in a six-pack of Australian beer, the only kind she’ll drink, which she says she can only get at one store in L.A. Mac is sitting next to the fire pit, just getting a bonfire blazing.

Jack grabs a beer from the fridge and a slice of meat lovers’ pizza from a box on the counter, and joins Mac by the fire. “Hey bud, how you doin’?”

Mac sighs.“Well, I just found out my best friend isn’t dead, might be a traitor, isn’t a traitor but my boss is, my girlfriend walked out, and the agency I work for is belly-up.” Jack can hear traces of anger, but they’re drowned out by an overwhelming, helpless defeat. _Everything he counted on turned out to be lies. I left, Thornton betrayed him. Nikki walked away._ He pokes the fire, and two logs crash down into a spray of crumbling ash and embers. “So I’m doing just wonderful.”

“You’ve got every right to be pissed at me and never talk to me again, so I’m just glad you called me over tonight.” Jack tries to catch Mac’s eye. “I don’t know that I ever properly said I was sorry, with all the Thornton stuff, but I’m gonna say it now. Mac, going undercover and lying to you was the worst decision I have ever made in my life, even more than dating that chick in Belgrade who was the former Soviet assassin.” Mac cracks a small smile in spite of himself. “And I promise you, I am never going to do that to you ever again. No more secrets, no more ‘for your own good’.”

“Thank you.” Mac leans back against the boards behind him. “And I’m sorry I gave up, that I fell apart without you even though I knew you wouldn’t have wanted it. And that I doubted you.”

“I gave you every reason to.” Jack reaches out, hand just shy of Mac’s arm, and the kid moves toward him. Jack rests his arm around Mac’s shoulders, and the kid stiffens for a second and then relaxes leaning against Jack.

It’s not how it used to be. Hell, it can never go back to that naive trust. But maybe they can start again, and maybe they’ll be stronger for this. After all the lies, all the betrayal, all the heartbreak, they’ve found their way back together again.

“Well, I hate to be the raincloud here, but...um...I thought we just got burned?” Riley says, sitting down beside Jack and propping up her laptop, which is quietly thumping classic rock. _Guess I left some impression on the kid after all_. “So where do we go from here?”

“We rise,” Mac says quietly, holding up a medallion Jack knows a little too well. “The phoenix is a mythological bird that dies in flames and then rises reborn and stronger than ever from the ashes.”

“Which is exactly what we’re going to do.” Cage raises her bottle. “To phoenixes.”

“I believe you might have just given us our new cover name,” Matty smiles. “As of tomorrow, you’re all employees of the Phoenix Foundation, think tank...and international agency.”

Jack feels Mac’s solid warmth against him, and smiles. Time to start again. Time to rise.


End file.
